Tag Archives: iPad

Indie gaming’s underdog story of one man’s simple game taking the entire world by storm has just turned to a new chapter the mobile gaming chapter. Swedish developer Markus Persson (aka Notch) and his company Mojang Specification’s Minecraft will eventually be coming to the Apple iOS devices officially (because, yes there are a few non-official ports of the game for the devices already).

On Reddit, Notch said that the mobile version of the game will not be a port it will be a fully rewritten piece of software being worked upon by the ninth (and newest) member of the Mojang family:-

Since we can’t use Java on the iOS, and we want both the mobile versions to use the same codebase, the Android version won’t be written in Java. Besides, we want the game to be made for the new devices, not just a simple port, so a rewrite is good anyway.

We hired a new guy for that, he’ll be starting on Saturday (the same day the entire office goes to GDC.

The mobile version of Minecraft is being developed by Aron Neiminen, the aforementioned new guy, and we should expect it later this year.

P.S. It also seems like the Minecraft website is down. Expectant users? New version? Who knows?

As the expected iPad 2 launch date nears, new rumors about the iPad 2 are cropping up daily. First, it was rumored that the iPad 2 will have a very high resolution retina display with double the resolution of the original iPad. Then the word on the street was that the iPad 2 would have dual cameras, as well as USB ports, and would be launched on April 2 or 9. We still don’t know if any of those were true, but now, we have another rumor, which is even more incredible.

Today, SuperApple.cz claimed that Apple is working on two iPad models – with screen sizes of 5.7 inches and 6 inches. It’s not clear whether those models will be a smaller iPad or a larger version of the iPod Touch.

Apple has apparently worked on various screen sizes before deciding on the 9.7 inch display on the iPad, which it thinks is the ideal size for a tablet. Steve Jobs had also criticized the Galaxy Tab, saying that 7 inch tablets were dead on arrival.

7 inch tablets were definitely more portable, and more suited for gaming, but considering that with the launch of Honeycomb, all the major Android tabelt manufacturers are moving to 10 inch tablets, we think Apple was right in hindsight.

This device could very well be a bigger iPod Touch, which would be much more suited for videos and games though. We will have to wait for the official announcement for more details, but I’m definitely not betting on Apple launching a 6 inch iPad anytime soon.

Apple is smart which is why it has been taking longer and longer to jailbreak the newer versions of iOS. However, the Dev team has been able to find a workaround to jailbreak and unlock. It’s more of a cat and mouse game between these two.

The fix was put in place by @comex and @pushfix who managed to fix the issue with the latest jailbreaking tool, allowing users to continue reading book they purchased through the app store.

So if you have been facing an issue with the iBooks software, head over to the Dev Team blog to download the latest PwnageTool 4.2 bundle to jailbreak and unlock your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad and start using iBooks again. These updates will also be made available through the Cydia app, so you can just update the app and start using iBooks app without having to restore and jailbreak your device again.

The new PwnageTool 4.2 consists of a untethered jailbreak for all the above devices. In addition to allows users to jailbreak their devices, iPhone unlockers can also restore to a custom 4.2.1 IPSW and retain their current baseband and unlock. PwnageTool currently does not support iPod Touch 2G.

Well in the case of an HFS volume name on iOS, an untether exploit â€” as the Chronic Dev Team revealed last week with an untether for the 4.2.1 jailbreak, which had previously been a tethered JB for most recent devices since 4.2.1’s release in November. With their permission, we’ve incorporated their 4.2.1 feedfaceuntether into today’s PwnageTool 4.2. This means iPhone unlockers can safely restore to a custom 4.2.1 pre-jailbroken IPSW and retain their current baseband and unlock. PwnageTool also supports all the other 4.2.1 devices other than iPod touch 2G:

PwnageTool also pushes a fix for iBooks by @comex and @pushfix which fixes a bug so that it works as intended with DRM books along with fixing a WiFi problem on Apple TV 2G. All these updates will be available in the Cydia package updates.

About two weeks back, Apple had launched the Daily iPad app at a press event by News Corp. With The Daily, Apple had also unveiled a new feature – in-app subscriptions, which allowed app developers to offer one-click, recurring subscriptions for their apps. However, it wasn’t available for developers yet.

Today, Apple officially made in-app subscriptions available to all app developers on the App Store. Good news, right? Well, its not that simple. In this announcement, Apple has also mandated that app developers must offer subscriptions through the app, if they are offering subscriptions through other channels. The catch here is, that Apple takes a 30% cut if the user subscribes from within the app, and takes nothing if the user subscribes from outside channels. However, subscribing from within the app will obviously be much more easier for the user, so the revenues of apps offering in app subscriptions will likely be affected negatively. It may also lead to developers jacking up prices, as they will need to account for Apple’s cut while offering subscription based services.

Our philosophy is simpleâ€”when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing,said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app.”

Apple has set a deadline of June 30 for app developers to comply with the new guidelines.

Recently we gave away a free iPad to a lucky winner as our Christmas gift to our readers. That contest is over so where would you get a free iPad now? Not from those stupid bots pretty ladies on Twitter who mention you in tweets and tell you that you can win a Free iPad from some site.

First of the Free iPad mentions are a scam and I urge you to report the sender as spam and block them. Secondly most of the free iPad tweets are basically spam. If you are enticed and click on those links, you will be asked to fill up some survey which could lead to tons of email spam or you could potentially just download some virus or malware to your PC.

Some of these links could be as bad as the Facebook scams doing rounds of the internet and you could unwittingly share something on your timeline.

So please don’t click on the links when you see these kind of messages. Anything Free comes with a catch . However, when we say that we are giving away an iPad, it is for real .

A new rumor says that HP’s new webOS tablet, which was unveiled on February 9 at HP’s webOS press event, will be priced at $699, which is quite close to the iPad, and less than what the Motorola Xoom is to be priced at. The pricing seems decent, but a lower price point would have helped HP a lot more if it really wants to make a dent in the iPad’s market share.

BGR‘s sources also point that HP will be launching the TouchPad by the end of June 2011, which should send it straight into war with the likes of the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, Apple iPad 2, Blackberry Playbook and just about every other promising tablet announced at CES and even those which are expected to be unveiled at MWC.

The HP TouchPad is a very promising tablet which runs webOS 3.0. It offers very tight integration with webOS based devices like the Palm Pre 3. It comes with a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor clocked at 1.2 GHz and offers 1 GB RAM. It also has a 9.7 inch capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. It also comes with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS. It has a 1.3 MP front facing camera as well, for video calling. The Wi-Fi only version of the TouchPad will likely be priced much lower than this.

The Blackberry Playbook is supposed to be one of the strongest competitors to the Apple iPad and the slew of Android 3.0 powered tablets which will launch in a couple of months, barring the new HP Touchpad, which was announced yesterday.

It was unveiled months back by Research in Motion and will be available soon. However, we still didn’t have any official word on the pricing of the Playbook. It was speculated to be priced at $399 for the 8 GB version and at $499 and $599 for the 16 GB and 32 GB versions respectively.

It seems that the pricing was right. A leaked image reveals that the Blackberry Playbook is priced at $499 for the 16 GB version and will be available by the end of March at Office Depot. The pricing is quite good, especially when compared to the Motorola Xoom which is priced at $800.

The Blackberry Playbook comes with a 7 inch capacitive touchscreen display and has a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. It has a 1 GHz dual core processor and 1 GB RAM. It comes with a 5 MP and a 3 MP camera with support for 1080p HD video recording. It also offers Bluetooth 2.1 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity. It will run a new tablet OS based on the QNX architecture.

The Motorola Xoom has been one of the most talked about Android tablets since the end of 2010. It is the first Android tablet which will run Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the tablet version of Android. It will be the first serious competitor to the iPad, which is outdated now. Until the launch of the iPad 2, the Motorola Xoom will probably be the best tablet you can buy.

Today, the pricing details of the Motorola Xoom have been revealed, thanks to a leaked Best Buy ad. Just as we predicted earlier, it has been priced at $799.99 which is a bit high, but is comparable to the 3G iPad (32 GB) which is priced at $729. It will be available on Verizon with data plans starting at $20 per month for 1 GB data transfer to $80 per month for 10 GB data transfer.

Until the iPad 2 is launched, the Motorola Xoom will definitely be the best tablet around. However, I would rather wait till the iPad 2 launches, or till more Honeycomb tablets launch; the Xoom pricing should become more sensible then.

The Motorola Xoom is an Android 3.0 tablet which has a 10.1 inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. It also has a 1 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 1 GB RAM and comes with a 5 MP camera. It also has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G connectivity and has 32 GB internal storage.

Up until now, iOS4.2.1 users could only tether’ jailbreak their iTouch device. A tethered’ jailbreak is a temporary jailbreak and will last only until a reboot. After rebooting, the jailbreak will be lost and the user will again need to jailbreak his iTouch using a PC/Mac. Now, the Chronic Dev. Team has finally released a tethered jailbreak for iTouch devices running iOS4.2.1.

Today, the Chronic Dev. Team tool GreenPois0n was updated to RC5 which will allow users to jailbreak their iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod Touch 3G/4G and the iPad running on iOS 4.2.1. Unlike Redsn0w, users don’t need SHSH blobs of any previous iOS version to jailbreak. Users, who already have tethered’ jailbroken their iTouch, can directly use GreenPois0n to jailbreak their device.

iPhone 4 owners who are new to the jailbreaking scene and have unlocked their device are recommended to stay away from this jailbreak. They may accidentally update their baseband while updating to iOS 4.2.1 thus losing their unlock. They are suggested to use TinyUmbrella to preserve their baseband whilst upgrading to iOS 4.2.1.

Sadly, at the moment GreenPois0n is only available for Mac. A PC and Windows version is in the pipeline and should be coming soon. Mac owners simply need to download GreenPois0n from here and follow the on-screen instructions.